e
purpose of extorting information as to the hiding-place of the imperial
treasures, should do so. The true record of the life of Cortez reads
more like romance than like the truth. This is not perhaps the place to
refer to his private life, which history admits to have been perfidious.
Landing on the continent with a band scarcely more than half the number
of a modern regiment, he prepared to traverse an unknown country
thronged with savage tribes, with whose character, habits, and means of
defense he was wholly unacquainted. We know that this romantic adventure
was finally crowned with success, though meeting with various checks and
stained with bloody episodes, that prove how the threads of courage and
ferocity are inseparably blended in the woof and warp of Spanish
character.

Just above the town, on the hillside, is the ancient convent of San
Francisco, which contains over one hundred paintings more than two
centuries old. The old church of San Francisco, close at hand, dates
from a period, three hundred and seventy years ago, when Mexican history
often fades into fable. The approach is over a paved way, and through a
road bordered by a double row of old trees, which form a gothic
perspective of greenery. The convent now serves in part for the purpose
of a military barrack, before which stand a few small cannon so
diminutive as to have the appearance of toys. A few soldiers lounged
lazily about, and some were asleep upon a bench. Probably they were
doing guard duty after the Mexican style. On the hillside above the
church of San Francisco is a modern church, and beyond it a Campo Santo.

This gray old church, the oldest in Mexico, is certainly very
interesting in its belongings, carrying us in imagination far into the
dim past. "The earliest and longest have still the mastery over us,"
says George Eliot. This was the first church erected by the Spaniards in
Mexico, and was in constant use by Cortez, who, notwithstanding his
heartless cruelty, his unscrupulous and murderous deeds, his gross
selfishness, faithlessness, and ambition, was still a devout Catholic,
never omitting the most minute observances of church ceremonies, and
always accompanying his most questionable deeds with the cant phrases of
religion. The roof of the church of San Francisco is a curiosity in
itself, being upheld by elaborately carved cedar beams, which were
imported from Spain. In a side chapel is preserved the original pulpit
from which t